Some wounds of war have healedmany others won't go away

Michael Tackett and Tim JonesTribune national correspondents

At one end of the National Mall, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is walking into the Capitol for a vote, with students on the steps instantly recognizing him and calling out his name. At the other end, in his 18th year of manning a POW-MIA booth, Chris Horstman sits in a wizened obscurity.

Between them lies the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the dark, brooding, "V"-shaped wall that begins with Jessie Calba on slab 70E and ends with John H. Anderson on slab 70W, commemorating the more than 58,000 war dead. The wall descends below street level and stands in contrast to the nearby soaring tribute to World War II service.

Thirty years after the war's end, Vietnam remains a catch-all metaphor for this nation's most troubled period in the last half-century, still evoking anger, ambiguity and resignation. While memories of the conflict recede, the war continues to affect the nation's politics, military strategy and culture.

Last week in Kansas City, Mo., 54-year-old Vietnam veteran Michael Smith waited in line 90 minutes for the chance to spit on Jane Fonda. That is one side of the divide.

Earlier this month, the family of Sheldon Burnett of New Hampshire was able to bury his remains--found last year in Laos--at Arlington National Cemetery, after first learning of his disappearance 34 years ago. That is another.

Vietnam sparked huge protests on America's college campuses. Today's college students can hardly relate.

"I really don't have any connection with it," said 19-year-old University of Minnesota freshman Kelsey Murphy, from Lakeville, Minn. She also cannot recall whether her parents, who are in their 40s, ever discussed the war. And that is yet another facet of the argument.

And there are many others. The mere mention of the word "Vietnam" can still start an argument, and never perhaps as easily as in Washington. But those strong feelings seem to erode with time and distance. For most young Americans, in particular, Vietnam is just another grainy montage in the study of U.S. history, known to them more for the student protests and music the era spawned than for what happened on the battlefield.

McCain's triumph

McCain has lived that ambiguity and triumphed over it. A veteran celebrated for his heroic role as a prisoner of war in Hanoi, McCain said he had hoped the country had moved on. But when the issue surfaced so prominently in the 2004 presidential campaign--particularly with the attacks on Sen. John Kerry's service in the conflict--he realized that it had not.

"Unfortunately in the last presidential election we found that we have not moved on at all," McCain said. "Thirty years, and it still divides us."

"The legacy is that this is still the second-most divisive conflict in the history of our country--the Civil War being the first--and unfortunately, I don't think the wounds will heal completely until those of us who fought in that time pass on.

"I hate to sound so pessimistic."

Yet pessimism is one of the clearest and cruelest bequests of the Vietnam era to the United States. Some experts believe it started a cycle of civic disengagement, leading to a drop-off in voting and in faith in the institutions of government. The end of the military draft and the Watergate scandal, no doubt, fueled those same trends.

And while Vietnam can still expose raw disagreements, Americans largely share the view that it was a mistake to wage war in the jungles of Southeast Asia.

"The public looking back agrees that the war was a mistake, was not a just war," said Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll, which has been surveying U.S. attitudes on war for more than 50 years. "But that doesn't mean there can't be all kinds of debates about who performed honorably or not. That is a different question."

Horstman, who was manning the POW-MIA booth, trained at Great Lakes Naval Training Center in North Chicago; he served in the Navy from 1968-70. In one moment, he says he has moved on from the conflict. In another, he says he never will.

"I'm sure some people who served have moved on, and there are those . . . still looking to do right," Horstman said. "I'm not saying they don't care, but they've decided to get on with their lives.

"After the fall of Saigon, not only did the president of the United States, but also the government leaders and military officials lie about Americans left behind," he said, "and they didn't do anything."

So he presses on with his call for searches for those who he suspects might still be imprisoned in Laos or Cambodia.

"I feel if we could get the release of one live American, we have done our job because to us, the Vietnam War is not over," Horstman said.

As the Democratic presidential nominee, Kerry tried to make his Vietnam combat experience a central part of his personal campaign narrative, as a measure of his credentials to be commander in chief. But that set off instead a re-examination of his service record and his role protesting the war when he returned.

Though service in Vietnam helped to launch the political careers of Kerry, McCain and others, it by no means proved a gilded credential with voters.

Bill Clinton was elected in 1992 despite criticism that he avoided service in Vietnam. Then George W. Bush, who secured a spot in the Texas Air National Guard that almost certainly assured he would not go to Vietnam, defeated Al Gore, who did serve, and Kerry.

Richard Armitage, who recently resigned as deputy secretary of state, served three tours in Vietnam and a fourth during the war aboard a Navy ship. He said the war's influence on American politics and life is ongoing.

"Just ask John Kerry," he said. "It's a gift that keeps on giving."

Its echoes are still felt at the Pentagon. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who served in combat in Vietnam and ascended the military ranks to become chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, often argued that the U.S. had to be willing to use overwhelming force before entering an armed conflict and it had to have a clear exit strategy after achieving battlefield victory.

That policy was clearly employed during the 1991 Persian Gulf war and the major combat phase of the Iraq war, but critics of the Bush administration question whether officials properly crafted an exit strategy.

Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), who served in Vietnam in 1969 along with his brother, Tom, believes, unlike McCain, that most soldiers "have put it behind us. And we should."

The 2004 campaign, he said, was "more about one Vietnam veteran than it was about the war."

Which is not to say there isn't also a powerful legacy to the conflict, at least for Hagel's Baby Boom generation.

"One of the primary lessons we learned is that leaders always must tell the truth to the people and you can never sustain a war policy when you lie to the people," he said.

"I don't blame anything particularly on Vietnam or say it was the catalyst, but it was the defining dynamic of a generation and we are still seeing the effects of that, the divisiveness of that," Hagel said.

But only in increasingly isolated settings. Beyond Washington, memories of Vietnam are kept alive largely by war memorials and POW-MIA groups.

On college campuses today, Vietnam is seen through a more general lens of war, largely the stuff of academia and movies.

MIA flag still flies

At the University of Minnesota, for instance, a black MIA/POW flag flies from the rooftop pole of the 109-year-old stone armory building, a lone and lonely symbol.

The war itself--if it is recalled at all--resurfaces in unusual ways. David Gutman, a 22-year-old senior and history major from Omaha, said the legacy of Vietnam was "the interesting counterculture and the music of the '60s and '70s."

To Bob Herman, 68, a professor of genetics at the University of Minnesota, the legacy of Vietnam has been mostly forgotten.

"For me, it's what a big mistake the whole thing was, and I don't think we've learned a thing. Now, here we are in Iraq," Herman said.